Mary stopped what she was doing and stared at Adam. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as a heart attack,” he stated, pinching off a piece of cake from the plate nearest to him. “Hmmm, that’s very good.”
“You’d be okay with that?”
“I won’t lie to you. I want you so badly that I ache for you. However, I’ve waited for this moment since high school so I’ve already proven that I’m a patient man and if I have to wait until you feel comfortable, so be it.”
“You would seriously be okay with eating cake and playing board games for the entire evening?”
“I would. You should know that I watched your strategy during game night and I know I can beat you, so, if I can’t have you physically, I’ll settle for whooping you in a marathon of Chutes and Ladders,” he laughed, reaching past her to get his plate and fork. Adam took his plate and headed for the small kitchen table, pulling out a chair before Mary stopped him.
“Adam, let’s have dessert on the couch.”
“Okay.” Adam pushed the kitchen chair back in, picked up both plates and headed for the living room.
“I’ll bring us some wine. Do you mind boxed wine?”
“As long as it comes from grapes, I don’t care,”
“That’s what Katherine said the night she stayed over during the storm,” Mary said, laughing. “I like her a lot, by the way.”
“I like her as well. She’s strong, smart and independent and she’s proud. You two have a lot in common. It’s no wonder you like her so much,” he said, setting down both plates on the coffee table while he waited for Mary. When she arrived with the two glasses of wine, Adam waited until she sat down before he took his seat.
“I think Carter has a crush on her,” Mary said, sipping her wine as she got comfortable on the couch, kicking off her high heels before curling up on the couch in her bare feet. She grabbed the throw from the back of the couch and tossed it over her lap.
Adam smiled noticing how relaxed Mary was getting now that the pressure was off, “I think you’re right. There’s something going on between those two and I’m glad for both of them. I like Carter as a human being and I think he became a lawyer just to get away from Dad and the ranch, but I don’t think he has the stomach for corporate law.”
“Why do you say that?” Mary asked, taking her first bite of the red velvet cake.
“No matter how hard Carter tries to act like an Armani-wearing, cold-hearted, New York attorney, I think he knows that spending his career helping white-collar criminals get off scot-free is not something he really wants anymore,” Adam said between bites of his large piece of cake.
“Do you think he really wanted it at some point in his life?”
“I think he got caught up in the chase. He was chasing the scholarships and then the grades necessary to get into law school and then he was chasing the bar and then it was hooking into a large, prestigious New York law firm and then, most recently, the whole picture of the beautiful blonde that made him part of a power couple, the New York apartment and the chance to make partner. But now that he’s back on the ranch, I think he’s had a chance to rethink that and I don’t think that’s what he wants anymore. I think a lot of people get swept up in that chase, like a good hunting dog.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my parent’s case, they were raised to believe they should get married and have a lot of children as soon as possible. So, my mom was focused on finding a husband while my father was focused on finding someone to bear his children and raise them. They were both in such a hurry to get married and start a family like everyone else was that I doubt they ever really gave it much thought until it was too late.”
“Do you think they would have made different choices if they had waited?”
“My mother had dreams and aspirations that she would never achieve because she got swept up in that ‘get married and have a large family’ rat race. So, in answer to your question, I think if she were being honest, she would have wanted to make different choices if hindsight were twenty-twenty. Unfortunately for her, she died young. For some women of her generation, they would put their own dreams on hold until their children were grown and then they would be able to focus on their own dreams and aspirations. Since there’s no guarantee that you will have tomorrow, putting your life on hold because you are chasing someone else’s dream of what your life should look like seems like a bad idea.” Adam reached for his glass of wine. “The real question I think you’re asking is if you would have made different choices if you had waited. Did I read you right on that?”
Mary studied him in silence for a moment, surprised by how insightful he was. “Yes, you read me right. I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who got swept up in someone else’s definition of what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I dated Beau’s father in high school because he was a prominent jock and that’s what all the girls were supposed to do. I slept with him because I wanted to hang on to him because dating the big high school jock was important. We didn’t use protection because he assured me that you couldn’t get pregnant on your first time and I believed him and then, a few months later, when we found out I was with child, my world came crashing down around my ears.”
“For what it’s worth, I never told you how I felt about you in high school because you were a freshman and I was a senior and I never believed that someone as wonderful as you would ever give a geek like me the time of day. I believed that because I got swept up in the rules of high school cliques and it cost me so much wasted time and heartache.”
“Don’t feel badly about that, I was so swept up in the ‘chase the jock’ thing in high school that I probably wouldn’t have been open to dating anyone else. I guess we have all been guilty of falling into the trap of keeping up with the Jones’s or we were all so focused on looking like we were successful or buying into the stereotypical archetypes of that time that we didn’t pay any attention to actually looking for happiness. As Maya Angelou once said, ‘When I knew better, I did better.’”
“Are you a fan of Maya Angelou’s work?”
“Yes, I love the way she wrote. Her ability to reach a reader through her choice of words was really powerful and even though she has passed on, her work still stands the test of time. That’s what I had hoped to be able to do before my life took a left turn in high school.”
“What were your aspirations?”
“I wanted to go to college to study creative writing and journalism. My ultimate goal was to become a writer,” Mary said.
“Really? That’s amazing. Were you interested in fiction or nonfiction?”
“You’re going to think this is silly,” she said somewhat embarrassed.
“Let me be the judge of what I think is silly or not,” Adam reassured her.
“Okay, what I really wanted to do was to focus on sharing life lessons through fictional works so the reader would get the lesson presented through the actions of the characters in a novel. In other words, I didn’t just want to write good stories, I wanted to write stories that stuck.”
“What do you mean by stuck?”
“I wanted the lessons in the novels to stick with my readers in the hopes that it would help them make a shift in their lives. I realize that if you tell people to change, most times it falls on deaf ears but if you subliminally or subtly display what the change would look like, you can help people change their thinking and once they do that, change is inevitable.”
“My administrator at the college suggested I journal my time here on the ranch and consider writing a book about it,” Adam confessed.
“That’s a great idea. How is it going?”
“So far, I’ve been keeping the journal on my laptop in my room and I add to it every night. It was hard at first to get into the hang of things, but I’m enjoying the process now, more than I imagined I would.”
“I envy you,” she said sincerely.
“Are you writing anything?”
&nb
sp; “I have written children’s books and short stories but, as you know, my life has been upside down for some time now and I find myself so focused on just getting through each day that I never have time to focus on writing.”
“Where are your writings?”
“Sitting in a box in my bedroom where they will probably stay until Beau is married and has a family of his own. My days are focused on Beau and making sure he has everything he needs to thrive so I guess I’ll have to wait like your mom’s generation until I’m old and gray before I can pursue my own writing.”
“Instead of playing a marathon of Chutes and Ladders, do you think I could see what you’ve written?”
Mary could instantly feel her face turning red. She stared at him for a long moment before saying quietly, “Can I make a confession?”
“Sure,” he smiled.
“When I opened my front door to you tonight, it all became very real to me. I was suddenly afraid to have sex with you because I have stretch marks from giving birth and I worried that you wouldn’t find my body sexy but I just realized that those insecurities pale in comparison to the insecurities I now feel about showing you my writing,” she said honestly.
Adam studied her in silence noting how embarrassed she appeared to be, before saying, “I adore everything about you. I wouldn’t care if you weighed five hundred pounds or had warts all over your face. What I adore about you has more to do with who you are as a person than anything else. I would love to see some of your writing. I know it can be very scary to let anyone read what you’ve written; I feel the same way. What if I agreed to let you read some of my journal if you’ll let me read some of your work?”
She hesitated before saying, “But you have more education than I do, so your writing will always be better than mine,” she insisted.
Adam smiled. “We both graduated high school and you should know that some of the greatest authors of our time never graduated college.”
“Like who?”
“Like Truman Capote, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury and even one of your very favorite authors Maya Angelou. Did you know that she did graduate from high school, just like you did, but gave birth to her son three weeks later and was so desperate for money to support her child that she turned to prostitution and didn’t start her writing career until she was forty years old?”
“Oh my God, I had no idea,” Mary was shocked.
“So, you see, you’re in very good company and the author you adore came from a very tough set of circumstances and prevailed ― and you can, too. Now, will you let me read some of your work?”
Mary was quiet for a moment studying Adam before sighing, “Okay, come with me.” She stood up, taking him by the hand.
“Where are we going?”
“To my bedroom.”
“Are you going to let me read some of your work after all?”
“Only if you agree to let me read your journal,” she insisted.
“Agreed.” Adam followed her into her bedroom. She invited him to sit on the bed while she went into her closet to get the box down from the top shelf.
“Gosh, it’s been a long time since I looked in this,” she said, placing the 18 X 18 box on the bed between them, carefully lifting off the lid. Adam studied her face as she unearthed her writings from years before. He could see her lips curl into a small, proud smile as she remembered how many different things she’d written over the years.
“Some of these I don’t even remember writing. Oh look, there are some handwritten pieces in here too that I’d forgotten about.”
“This is like a time capsule in a way,” Adam smiled, not wanting to touch anything until Mary was willing to share it with him.
She looked up at him for a moment, “You know, this is a time capsule of who I was before I got pregnant. I wonder if I’ll even recognize my writing from back then. It feels like that was a lifetime ago, like these were written by someone I don’t even know any more. Things in my life have changed so much since then.” Mary carefully handled each individual piece of paper as though it were a secret portal into her past. “Oh my God,” Mary whispered, studying the single piece of paper in her hands.
“What is it?” Adam asked, watching her as she read the words that were handwritten on the page. He was moved by the stunned look on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“This is the last piece I wrote before I found myself in the doctor’s office the next day getting treated for what I was certain was just the flu. His words in that moment changed my life forever, ‘I’m sorry miss, but you’re pregnant,’ he said to me. This piece marked the end of my life as I knew it before he uttered that sentence.”
“May I read it?” he asked tenuously. Mary looked up from the page and stared at him, knowing that when he read it, he would never be able to look at her the same way. She knew that once he read it, he would know just how far she’d fallen, just what a mess she’d made of her life and that it was all her own fault.
“Okay,” she whispered in resignation, handing the page over to Adam. He treated it as though he were handling something very fragile and delicate. Mary watched his face as he read her handwritten words on the sheet of lined paper, looking for any early indication as to what he was thinking.
The World is Mine
I’m on the launch pad of my life now.
All my choices follow the Tao.
The world is in front of me,
With endless possibilities.
There for the picking,
The clock is ticking.
Opportunities to fly,
So many before I die.
I won’t waste a single one,
Life is too much fun!
Adam finished reading the page and sat silently, staring at the paper, his thumbs gently stroking the edges of the page as though he were trying to absorb the memory or the emotion of that moment when pen and paper met. He looked up at Mary and said quietly, “’Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.’”
“What?”
“That is a quote from May Angelou that applies to you too. ‘Stand up straight and realize who you are.’ You are a woman who had her life turned upside down when she was very young. You are a woman who put your child and his father’s needs ahead of your own. You are a woman who owned her choices and has lived her life with her head held high with pride and dignity, especially when life threw you curveballs. You are a woman who has raised a fine young boy on your own, against the odds, and beyond all that, you are a woman who carries herself through life with grace. Can I ask you a question?”
Mary’s eyes were filling with tears. She hesitated for a moment, afraid of what he might ask her, “Okay,” she said tenuously.
“Can you imagine your life without Beau in it?”
“No, of course not. He is my heart,” she said quickly and definitively.
“Then, is it possible that Beau was, and is the gift, the endless possibility, your opportunity to fly? Is it possible that getting pregnant wasn’t the tragedy or the disaster but maybe it was the one thing that provided you with the depth of character, courage and tenacity to be the writer you want to be, because now you understand gratitude and love on a whole new level that you couldn’t possibly have understood when you wrote this piece?”
Mary stared at Adam for a long moment without saying a word. She gently took the piece of handwritten paper from his hands and placed it carefully back into the box, along with the others before putting the lid back on. She got up from the bed to return the box to its rightful place in her closet before returning to the bed where she sat down next to Adam, caressing his face in her hands before kissing him tenderly on the lips.
“Hmmm, what was that for?” Adam asked, opening his eyes once again after she finished kissing him.
She allowed her arms to drape around his neck as she said, “I’ve spent the last eight years of my life living
silently in shame. Ashamed that I got pregnant before I was married. Ashamed that I had to get married to someone I didn’t love because of it. Ashamed that my mistake caused Beau’s daddy to have to marry me which meant he couldn’t marry anyone that he really loved and then ashamed that because of me, he would never have had an opportunity to have a loving wife because he died so young. Your words have changed all of that and without you, I would have never, ever, considered those. I was so busy beating myself up that I didn’t see what a gift my son is in my life and while the last eight years have been very hard, I have done my best to stand up straight and to overcome the adversities as they came my way without letting my heartbreak or troubles spill out into the rest of my life.”
“Those are just some of the reasons why I adore you, Mary, and I’m glad you are finally seeing the woman that I see and that everyone I know sees when they look at you.”
Mary slowly brought her hands down and started to unbutton Adam’s shirt. “What are you doing?”
“You said that you wouldn’t touch me and that you would leave it up to me didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Well, I’m not ashamed anymore or embarrassed anymore. I am who I am and I’m proud of who she is and she wants to make love to the man who helped her realize that,” Mary whispered as she continued to unbutton Adam’s shirt.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
“I wish you would kiss me and kiss me for the whole night,” she smiled as their lips met .…
Book 2 shares what happened next for Adam and Mary, so be sure to check it out.
Chadwick Ranch, Book 2: Valentine’s Day Holiday Romance
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Chadwick Ranch, Book 1: Winter Holiday Romance Page 19